ritual itself being a form of faith. My reaction was unexpressed but negative, vehement, excessive even to me.

grief feels like suspense,”

In fact the grieving have urgent reasons, even an urgent need, to feel sorry for themselves.

Two cords of stacked wood had not kept the woman in the house across Marlboro Street from becoming a widow at dinner.

“Obituary,” unlike “autopsy,” which was between me and John and the hospital, meant it had happened.

Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is construed as unnatural, a failure to manage the situation.

Stuck in the back of the frame there was a crayoned note, left one day on the kitchen counter in Malibu: Dear Mom, when you opened the door it was me who ran away XXXXXX—Q.

so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.

One situation in which pathological bereavement could occur, I read repeatedly, was that in which the survivor and the deceased had been unusually dependent on one another. “Was the bereaved actually very dependent upon the deceased person for pleasure, support, or esteem?”